Sony Ericsson Z300

Discontinued15th November 2005

The Sony Ericsson Z300 is a simple clamshell
phone aimed at the budget market. It's a dual-band GSM
phone in three variants - the Z300a is an 850/1900 MHz
handset for North America, the Z300c is a 900/1800 MHz
version for China, and the Z300i is a 900/1800 MHz version
for the rest of the world.

Inside the Z300 is a 128x128 pixel STN
display in 65,000 colours with a 64x64 pixel monochrome
display on the outside. The Z300 is designed to be a
very easy to use device, and it has a simple and quite
large keypad.

Really
the Sony Ericsson Z300's feature list is rather short.
It comes with GPRS, a WAP browser and some PIM and personalisation
functions and really that's about it. There's no camera,
no Bluetooth and certainly no fancy stuff on this phone.
The Z300 is designed to be inexpensive and easy to use.

It's a pretty phone though, available
in two colours "Granite Grey" and "Amethyst
Purple" (pictured left). In design terms, this
is very similar to the old Z200 handset which is actually
one of our favourite phones of all time. Each handset
also comes with a "Crystal Décor" set to decorate
the Z300 with.

There are a lot of low-cost clamshells
like this around, but what differentiates the Sony Ericsson
Z300 is style. The like of Samsung and Sagem make good
enough clamshells, but nothing with quite the attention
to detail of the Z300. Nokia have always been a bit
hopeless at this kind of thing too.